Turkish Ethnomedicinal Database (TEMDB): A Standardized Dataset of Medicinal Plant Use-Reports in Türkiye

In the corners of Türkiye, where three distinct botanical worlds meet, a deep tradition of healing has long relied on the local landscape. For generations, communities have turned to the wild plants around them to treat ailments, soothe injuries, and maintain health. This knowledge, passed down through families and recorded by local healers, represents a vast library of human experience with nature. However, this wisdom has historically been scattered across hundreds of individual research papers, each written in different ways, using different names for the same plants, and describing treatments with varying levels of detail. For scientists and doctors trying to understand the full picture of how these plants are used, this fragmentation creates a significant barrier. It is difficult to compare findings or spot patterns when the same information is locked away in separate, unconnected reports that do not speak the same language.

To solve this problem, a team of researchers has built a new digital archive called the Turkish Ethnomedicinal Database. Think of this database as a massive, organized filing cabinet that brings together thousands of scattered notes into a single, searchable system. The researchers did not go out into the fields to collect new plants or interview new healers for this specific project. Instead, they acted as meticulous librarians, gathering existing studies published between 2018 and 2020. They took the raw information from thirty-seven different scientific papers and cleaned it up, translating the messy, varied descriptions into a uniform format. They ensured that every plant was identified by its correct scientific name, that every reported illness was categorized using a standard medical system used by doctors worldwide, and that every method of preparing a remedy was described in the same way. The result is a clear, structured record of over four thousand specific instances where people in Türkiye have used plants to treat health issues, making this traditional knowledge accessible and ready for modern analysis.

The journey to create this database began with a systematic search through major scientific libraries. The researchers looked for any study that documented the use of plants for medicine or for treating animals in Türkiye during a specific three-year window. They found thirty-seven studies that met their strict criteria. These studies contained a wealth of information, but it was not immediately usable in its original form. One paper might call a plant by a name that is no longer used, while another might describe a treatment for a stomach ache in a way that is hard to compare with a treatment for indigestion in a different paper. To fix this, the team manually extracted every single report of a plant being used for a specific purpose. They did not combine these reports even if two different studies mentioned the same plant for the same illness; instead, they kept each report as a separate entry to preserve the unique story of where and how that specific information was found.

Once the raw data was collected, the team began the work of standardization, which is the process of making everything consistent. First, they looked at the names of the plants. They used global databases of plant names to verify the correct scientific identity for every species mentioned. If a study used an old or incorrect name, the researchers noted the original name for accuracy but added the currently accepted scientific name so that the plant could be correctly identified by anyone reading the database today. They also organized the plants into families and genera, creating a clear taxonomic structure. Next, they turned to the reasons why people used these plants. They took the thousands of different ways people described their symptoms and treatments and grouped them into a controlled list of standard terms. For example, if one study said a plant was used for "bloating" and another for "gas," the researchers grouped these under a single, clear category.

A crucial part of this standardization involved linking these traditional uses to the International Classification of Diseases, a system used by medical professionals globally to categorize illnesses. For human health records, the researchers mapped the traditional uses to this system. This does not mean they claimed that these traditional remedies are proven cures in a modern medical sense. Rather, it means they created a bridge that allows researchers to see how traditional descriptions of symptoms align with standard medical categories. For instance, a traditional remedy for a "cold" could be linked to the standard medical category for respiratory infections. This allows for easier comparison with other medical data. For the records concerning animals, which the researchers also included, they used a separate set of categories since the medical system for humans does not apply to veterinary cases.

The final database, now in its first version, contains 4,384 individual records. These records cover 826 different species of plants, representing 98 plant families and 361 genera. The vast majority of these records, over 4,200, describe how plants are used to treat human ailments, while a smaller but significant number, 163 records, describe how plants are used to treat animals. The researchers found that certain plant families appear far more often than others. The mint family, known scientifically as Lamiaceae, was the most frequently mentioned group, followed by the rose family and the aster family. At the level of individual species, the stinging nettle was the most commonly cited plant, appearing in 132 separate reports, followed by the common plantain and the dog rose.

When looking at what people were trying to treat, the data revealed a wide range of uses. The most common standardized indication was diabetes, followed by wound healing, coughs, and the common cold. However, a large portion of the records fell into a broad category for general symptoms and signs that do not fit neatly into a specific disease. This highlights that traditional medicine often addresses general feelings of unwellness or specific symptoms rather than just named diseases. The geographic distribution of these records was also uneven. The province of Düzce contributed the highest number of reports, followed by Erzurum and Bingöl. The researchers noted that this unevenness reflects where the original studies were conducted, not necessarily where medicinal plant use is most common across the entire country.

The creation of this database was guided by a set of principles known as FAIR, which stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. The goal was to make sure that this data could be easily found by anyone, accessed without unnecessary barriers, combined with other data sets, and used again for new research. To achieve this, the database is hosted on a public platform where anyone can search for specific plants or treatments. However, to protect the detailed location information of these traditional practices from being harvested by automated systems, the full list of data cannot be downloaded in one large batch. Instead, researchers who need the complete dataset must request it, ensuring that the data is used responsibly. The database is also openly licensed, meaning that anyone can use the information for their own work as long as they give credit to the original creators.

The researchers were careful to define the limits of their work. They excluded graduate theses and dissertations to ensure that the source material was consistent and peer-reviewed, even though this meant leaving out some valuable fieldwork. They also made it clear that this database is not a complete history of all Turkish ethnobotany; it is a snapshot of studies published between 2018 and 2020. The team did not verify the plants themselves in the field, nor did they test whether the remedies actually work. Their job was to organize and clarify the existing reports, not to validate the medical claims. They acknowledged that the original studies varied in quality and that some ambiguities in the reports could not be fully resolved. These uncertainties were documented so that future users would know exactly what they were looking at.

This project represents a significant step forward in how traditional knowledge is managed and shared. By bringing together scattered reports into a single, standardized format, the Turkish Ethnomedicinal Database allows for a clearer view of the relationship between people and plants in Türkiye. It provides a foundation for future research, allowing scientists to compare findings across different regions and time periods. The database is designed to grow; the researchers plan to add studies from other years in the future, expanding the archive to cover a broader span of time. For now, it stands as a testament to the value of organizing information, turning a collection of isolated facts into a coherent resource that can help us understand the enduring role of nature in human health.